The Mackinac Center typically sends hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests to public offices every year. A FOIA request requires public entities to turn over documents and is an extremely important tool for holding government accountable.
These requests have helped us uncover unions skimming money from home health care aides and child care providers, break news of a scandal involving a film studio, expose teachers who couldn’t be fired despite committing criminal acts, find out about millions of public dollars being used for private union employees, discover a pension spiking scandal and more.
By Jack McHugh
The 99th Michigan Legislature met for the first time on Jan. 11. New officers were selected for the House, which has 42 new members. Senators are half-way through their four year terms, and the Senate retained the same leadership.
This report includes a procedural vote or attendance roll call from each body so that readers can see the names of their own new or continuing state Representative and Senator.
At Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing to become U.S. secretary of education, Democratic senators repeatedly lectured her on the need to “protect public education.” Notably, ranking member Sen. Patty Murray asked DeVos, “Can you commit that you will not work to privatize public schools or cut a single penny for public education?”
Two personal income tax elimination bills are apparently in the offing on the Senate and House sides of the Legislature. Both call (ultimately) for the wholesale elimination of the state’s personal income tax, born in Michigan 50 years ago, this Oct. 1.
By Ben DeGrow
With the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos delayed until Jan. 17, the heated conversation has continued surrounding the state of Detroit charter schools and her work as an educational choice advocate.
The Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden and I debunked the “Wild West” myth of the Motor City’s educational landscape and clarified DeVos’ mainstream position on school accountability. Further, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru repeatedly has corrected The New York Times’ twisting of the best available research that highlights the benefits of Detroit charters. Ponnuru compared the journalistic malpractice to “a game of telephone being conducted by propagandists.”
At Michigan Radio, columnist Jack Lessenberry thinks that new school employees should continue participating in the state’s grossly underfunded retirement system. It’s better for teachers to have an employer-sponsored pension income, he says, than employer-sponsored retirement savings accounts.
Lansing began 2017 on the right foot by enacting a law to make it easier for people to try to recover property seized through civil asset forfeiture, but the state should end the practice altogether.
Last week, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the ACLU of Michigan issued a joint press release applauding the Michigan Legislature and Gov. Rick Snyder for passing and signing into law House Bill 4629. The new law removes the requirement that people pay a bond equivalent to 10 percent of the value of the property seized through civil asset forfeiture if they want to try to get it back.
The French have a term for the tendency of professionals to try to address every societal issue from the point of view of their own expertise while ignoring other options. They call it “déformation professionnelle.” As new legislators take their seats in Lansing as the Michigan Legislature begins its session, they must take care not to become victims of that professional deformation, lest they risk further damage to the balance between government and society.
By Jason Hayes
(This is the third article in a three part series that discusses major changes made by the Michigan Legislature to energy utility regulation in the state. Those changes are now enrolled in statute as Public Acts 341 and 342 of 201.)
In the closing days of the 2016 lame duck session, the Michigan Legislature passed two major bills altering the management of electric utilities and electricity generation in the state. The primary focus of the bills was to determine the best way to pay for the construction of new generation capacity, made necessary by the premature closure of coal-fueled generation across the state. The bills also dealt with the future of the state’s electricity choice program, which provides 10 percent of electricity generated in Michigan. Lastly, the bills dealt with renewable energy, including addressing concerns over the state’s “net metering” program and the expansion of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Environmental lobbyists in Michigan are concerned that the money from the 1998 borrow-and-spend Clean Michigan Initiative is drying up. So they are warning that the state may no longer have money to clean up the environment.
But it is worthwhile to pause and consider a fuller picture before capitulating to demands that we spend more, or “do something.” In the case of the Clean Michigan Initiative, we are being told that a depleted CMI fund is keeping the director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Heidi Grether, up at night.
By Kahryn Riley
A Roseville man named Taylor Nicholas Trupiano received a $128 ticket after he left his car running unattended in his girlfriend's driveway on Jan. 5. After starting the car and then heading inside, he came back a few minutes later to find he had been ticketed, but no police car was in sight. "Vehicle parked in drive at [street address] with keys in ignition, motor running - no one around," reads the ticket. Trupiano took to Facebook under the name “Nick Taylor” to vent his frustration, posting a photo of the ticket with a strongly-worded caption criticizing the officer who issued it.
By Ben DeGrow
Betsy DeVos has already been the subject of much media scrutiny as a result of her nomination to be the next U.S. secretary of education. But the most significant test will come on Jan. 11, when the U.S. Senate will hold its confirmation hearing.
Critics have repeatedly missed the mark about the record of Michigan charter schools that DeVos’ high-profile policy advocacy has helped to shape. Meanwhile, supporters of school choice have speculated about what she could and should do in a federal cabinet role to advance educational choice and opportunity.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy congratulates the commonwealth of Kentucky, which became the nation’s 27th right-to-work state over the weekend.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, signed the legislation Saturday after it sailed through the legislature during the week. Once the law takes effect, unions will no longer be able to have workers in the Bluegrass State fired for not paying them dues.
What if the Legislature and governor hike gas and vehicle registration taxes to fix the roads, but then hardly any extra money goes to fix the roads?
Drivers started paying those higher taxes this month, though they were enacted near the end of 2015. But at least in the short term, the main effect of these tax increases appears to be higher spending on schools and Medicaid, not road repairs.
When I was growing up, my family wasn’t very engaged with politics and we spent little time discussing economic policy issues. If you would have asked me when I was a kid what “economics” was, I couldn’t have given much of an answer. But my parents were avid readers of newspapers — we got two daily papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Beacon News, as well as a weekly, the Sandwich Record, covering news from my hometown in Illinois.
(This is the second article in a three part series discussing major changes made by the Michigan Legislature to energy utility regulation in the state. Those changes are now enrolled in statute as Public Acts 341 and 342 of 2016.)
Michigan’s two large utilities — DTE and Consumers Energy — have committed to prematurely close several of the state’s coal generation facilities. They are maintaining those plans in the face of Trump administration promises to ax anticoal regulations and despite the fact that the closures could lead to energy shortfalls across the state. Construction of replacement generation and the fight to protect Michigan’s small electricity program have been at the center of a major statewide debate on energy over the past two years.
The Fraser Institute just released its latest rankings of economic liberty in North America, covering U.S. and Mexican states as well as Canadian provinces. Michigan’s holds the same 27th place ranking among the 50 U.S. states as it did the last time Frasier produced the list — a troubling indication of stagnation after several years of gains.
By Jack McHugh
With the close of the 2015-16 Michigan Legislature, MichiganVotes.org completes its 16th year of describing all the bills and all the votes cast by every state lawmaker. Over this period the site has provided concise, plain-English descriptions of 30,852 bills, 26,517 roll call votes, 20,562 amendments 5,804[*] new laws, and 69,178 votes that individual legislators missed.
We are the authors of a new study of state-funded tourism promotion programs that found them to be largely a waste of taxpayer money. The findings were so stark that we felt compelled to bring them to the attention of our fellow citizens and Michigan taxpayers, who will pay $34 million for this state’s promotion campaign.
By Jason Hayes
(This article is the first in a three-part series discussing major changes made by the Michigan Legislature to energy regulation in the state. Those changes are now enrolled in statute as Public Acts 341 and 342 of 2016.)
After a marathon two-day, lame-duck session, the Michigan Legislature completed and enacted new electric utility legislation that has been the focus of debate for the past two years. Ironically, the original purpose of the proposed legislation — to accommodate sweeping new federal regulations ordered by the Obama administration — appears obsolete after Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 8.
High taxes on cigarettes lead to high rates of smuggling, according to new research by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation.
The update to previous research on cigarette taxes and smuggling was published in December and supported previous research finding that high taxes increase the rates by which people illegally move cigarettes across borders. According to Moody on the Market:
The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation is continuing its support of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy with a $500,000 grant for education policy.
The gift will be used to help provide scientific research and information needed to create policies that improve schooling in Michigan.
Four years after Michigan’s right-to-work law passed, teachers in the Taylor School District are finally free to choose whether or not they wish to be part of a union.
In Mid-December, the State of Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in favor of teachers Angela Steffke, Rebecca Metz and Nancy Rhatigan, who were represented by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. The trio sued the Taylor Federation of Teachers Local 1085, the Taylor School District Board of Education and the Taylor School District over a 10-year-long union security agreement that would have forced them to remain in the union into 2023.
It looks like 2016 has been a good year for the state economy. The first official reports show that jobs, income and production are all up and tended to grow faster than national averages.
The data on the state’s current economic performance shows substantial growth, though much of it will not come out until after year-end.
As the latest legislative session came to a close, Michigan House Republicans failed to put a stop to two union schemes that are ripping off taxpayers. It is bizarre that, despite having a huge majority, the GOP continues to allow unions to misspend tax dollars for the sole purpose of enriching their officials.
